


Freak

by Ilocar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alchemy, Alternate Universe - Trans, Angst, Animal Lover Harry Potter, Cooking, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Nobility, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Harry Potter, Transgender, Transitioning, Vegetarian Harry Potter, Vegetarians & Vegans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 19:23:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18104852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilocar/pseuds/Ilocar
Summary: Harry discovers at a young age that he is actually a she, no matter what her aunt, uncle or anyone else says and nothing and no one will stop her from making her body reflect what she feels inside.





	Freak

Harry Potter was six years old when he first realized there was something wrong with him. He had always known he was a freak, but it wasn’t until he learned that boys were supposed to like playing tag, getting dirty and rough-housing; not playing with dolls, pretty frilly dresses and sparkly mock jewelry. When he had tried to play with the girls in his class, they had giggled, while the boys who noticed had, at Dudley’s suggestion, started to mock him and chant the hated word “Freak” over and over, until Harry ran, trying to keep his tears from falling, to the bathroom to hide and cry in peace.

When Harry had got home he had been screamed at by both his uncle and aunt about not drawing attention to his freakishness and not finding new ways to be freakish. He went for a whole week on one meal a day, locked in his cupboard, save when he was let out for chores.

Over the years, his sense that there was something wrong with him only grew stronger, but he had learned his lesson well. After that incident, the Dursleys constantly badgered and goaded him about dresses and frills in addition to their usual taunts. Dudley had changed his preferred insults to “poofter” and “queer,” but still used the age old favorite of “freak” every so often. Their constant badgering wore on Harry, stressing him to the point that in his few moments of peace he wondered if he weren’t becoming a complete head-case.

He knew they were right, of course. Harry had felt it every day, like he was walking around, uncomfortably, in someone else’s skin, some dirty, scrawny, ugly, freakish boy. All Harry really liked about his appearance were his eyes. He thought he might tolerate the hair if he could grow it out into something long and curly, rather than the frizzy, spiky mess that looked like it came out of some Chinese cartoon. Aunt Petunia would never allow that, of course. When she discovered that a buzz-cut or other short style would regrow overnight, she had settled for not letting it grow a centimeter longer, much to Harry’s disappointment. Everything came to a head when he met Sue, and thought he had made his first friend.

“Hey, you’re Harry Potter, right? The delinquent poof? Big D’s idiot cousin?” a voice asked. Harry looked up to see it belonged to Sue Tyler. She was a tomboy who spent her time teasing the other girls into oblivion. Harry looked for escape routes and, finding none, nodded mutely.

“Hey, buck up, no need to be all down. I heard Big D joking about you tryin’ to play dress-up, back in year 1. You may be a queer little freakazoid, but I admire your bollocks.” Sue looked left and right, checking for eavesdroppers, before leaning toward Harry conspiratorially. “Between you an’ me, I think you’d make a pretty little girl.” Sue winked before leaving Harry be in the library alcove he typically hid from Dudley in during break periods.

Harry was struck dumb. But in a secret deep-down place, he felt a thrill at the compliment. Would she help him? Could he trust her? Was she just making fun of him like everyone else? But no one had ever approached Harry like that before, and he was so starved for friendship he ignored any warnings his mind may have tried to give him.

Over the next couple of weeks he met with Sue in out of the way places, she would give him little things, hair clips, makeup, a beautiful frilly pair of girl’s underwear, and she would always compliment him and tell him to wear it next time, a satisfied smirk on her face.

This went on until the school year (his last in Primary) drew to a close. Sue brought him a pastel pink dress with a black silk sash and a blond wig.

“Here, try them on. I brought my camera to take pictures so you can see, I know you can’t keep these hidden, plus my parents would be mad if I gave away this dress. It’s supposed to be for church, you know. But this way you can see how pretty you are,” Sue stated in her imperious way that swept Harry up. His heart pounded in excitement at a chance to wear any clothes that were so nice and most assuredly not Dudley’s hand-me-downs. He quickly donned both dress and wig. Sue had Harry pose in various ways for the camera and snapped several pictures. At the time, it felt fun. It felt right.

“Good, good. Now come over here Harry, I brought a few friends I think will agree you look pretty too.” Harry followed her between two buildings into a dark secluded area, feeling nervous and extremely vulnerable.

“Hey, Poof! Sue was right, you are quite a vision.” Harry’s heart stopped as he heard Dudley’s voice and his barely contained laughter. Harry turned to look at Sue with hurt and confusion. She had her characteristic smirk on her face, but now it seemed more evil than humorous, he also noticed they were surrounded by Dudley’s gang.

“Oh, look at him, he honestly thought I was his friend,” Sue laughed cruelly. “Wrong! I just thought it would be hilarious to mess with you, never thought you were such a freak. Honestly, do you really think you could ever fool anyone that you were a girl? You just look like a stupid sicko freak in a dress.” Sue’s words hurt like knives, cutting to the core of his deepest insecurities. He couldn’t say a single word, only whimper as tears streamed unbidden down his cheeks.

“Oh my God, a freak and a cry baby, this is just too pathetic to watch. I’m gonna go develop these photos, so we can plaster them around school and hand them out tomorrow before summer, you boys have fun.” Sue practically cackled as she walked away. Harry watched her back receding into the distance, hoping at any moment she’d turn around and be his snarky best-friend Sue again, but she never did, and Harry fell to his knees in crippling despair.

It is a well-known fact that children are emotionally quite resilient. Harry had gone through verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of his relatives mostly unscathed, but he was unprepared for how much this betrayal of his trust hurt. Having never had a friend before, he had grasped at his relationship with Sue with both hands, like a drowning man clutching a life-preserver, but Sue had just cut the rope and laughed in his face for thinking he deserved rescue.

Harry curled into a ball, just before the snickering boys began punching and kicking him with reckless abandon. The familiar pain of the blows and the occasional broken bone was nothing compared to how he felt inside. He just wished to get away, far away from the laughing and kicking so he could cry and die of grief in peace. Harry felt a warm tingling sensation over his body before, suddenly, the blows stopped. He didn’t really care all that much and simply cried and rocked himself to sleep.

He was awoken by the brisk evening chill and loud shrieks of admonishment. He picked out a few words, such as something about a roof and a mark on his permanent record, but he just went where he was led, silently.

He was predictably screamed at for hours by his aunt and uncle before being locked in his cupboard with no supper. The next day at school, his pictures were up all over the halls. The other children were snickering and whispering as he passed. Harry managed to procure a copy of each picture and hid them, to keep as a reminder to never trust another person ever again.

He was blamed for the pictures. For some reason, the staff seemed to believe it was part of some elaborate graduation prank of some kind, although the blustering administrators were baffled and unnerved when Harry silently accepted whatever they said, not seeming to even pay attention to them.

The Dursley’s were upset that they were called in the middle of the day, to deal with more delinquent behavior from Harry and when he was sent home early, they threw him roughly into his cupboard, promising no meals for a week and a summer of hard labor, as if that was somehow different from typical summers.

Harry closed his eyes and focused on those short few weeks where he had thought he had a friend and one who had complimented him. He had felt almost comfortable in his own skin. He smiled bitterly. He knew he was broken, he had been told many times by the Dursleys that God hated freaks like him. He thought he understood why that might be now, he was a mistake. God had been drunk like his parents or something when he made Harry and put a girl’s soul, his soul into a boy’s body. People hated admitting to their mistakes, after all.

He snuffed out his secret wishes for someone to save him from the Dursleys or that he would wake up in the girl body he belonged in. There was no God, at least not one who was going to fix him, that would be admitting to His mistake, after all, there was no Father Christmas, and there was no such thing as magic, as the Dursleys were very clear on whenever the topic bore mentioning.

If Harry wanted to make his life better, no one and nothing would help him but himself, he realized that now.

True to their word, the Dursleys increased Harry’s workload significantly and for two weeks Harry did back-breaking labor on a single piece of toast and three glasses of water a day. He weeded, scrubbed, mowed, pruned, painted, organized, swept and dusted until he fainted from exhaustion or heatstroke each day. But after three weeks, the Dursleys began to feed him his normal meager portions again and were becoming hard-pressed to find more hard labor for Harry to do and so he was merely relegated to household chores of cleaning, cooking and washing.

Though Harry hated the work, he took pride in his accomplishments. Every whispered compliment about how immaculate the Dursley house was that Harry overheard made him inwardly smile. And so this pattern continued, with Harry purposefully experimenting in his work to do the fastest, highest quality work he could do, leaving the Dursleys little room to punish him.

Once he was allowed time to himself again, Harry began studying in the public library. He had purposely done poorly and ignored his coursework in primary school to avoid punishment for outdoing Dudley, but he no longer cared. He now knew the worst Vernon and Petunia had to throw at him and it didn’t scare him. He actually quite liked gardening and cooking. And though cleaning was taxing, he did love the rush of accomplishment he felt when looking over a glistening floor or counter top.

In addition to his coursework, Harry also studied up on everything to do with women. If there was a way for him to change himself into one, or even simply look satisfactory to his own eyes in a mirror, he would take it, consequences be damned. He finally knew who he was, rather who _she_ was, and no one could ever make her feel bad about it again. She studied fashion, hair care, anatomy (much to her blushing embarrassment), hygiene, anything that would make her look and act more like the girl she knew she was inside.

As the months passed, summer drew closer and closer to its conclusion and Harry actually found herself excited for the coming school year. She had been able to make her own money by doing work for the neighbors in her free time and had a plan to buy her own uniform for Stonewall from a surplus store when she got the chance, and some girl clothes while she was at it. She wasn’t sure how to hide them, but thought she’d cross that bridge when she got to it.

“Forty-six? But last year I got Forty-seven!” Dudley screamed as Harry dished up the Huevos Rancheros she had made based on a recipe she found in a world cookbook, apparently a favorite in the southern United States and parts of Mexico, she just hoped it still tasted as good using Spanish rice and the spices she had at hand instead.

Vernon eyed her suspiciously before tasting the food and grumbling noncommittally before wolfing it down like _he_ was the one who was starved. Harry smiled at the reaction and dished herself up a markedly smaller plate. She felt no need to try and make an issue of her smaller portions, since she really didn’t need more. In fact, she recently read that Calorie restriction was the only scientifically proven method to extend lifespan, so she was happy to eat less if it meant outliving her loathsome relatives.

After learning the basics of nutrition, Harry made a point to devise more nutritionally balanced meals so the portion size was not as important. A fry up might make for a tasty breakfast but, it was also basically nothing but fat on a plate. If it were completely up to Harry, she would try some of the exotic vegetarian recipes she had found. Mrs. Prashad, the Indian widow who lived on Magnolia Crescent had let her try some of her home-country’s native cuisine when she was fixing her roof and had worked past dinner. Harry had decided in that moment that meat was completely overrated. Harry smirked as she imagined the blank disbelieving looks Vernon and Dudley would give her if she tried to explain to them that she would much prefer chopped vegetables and spices to bacon and sausage any day.

“I don’t care if they're bigger, what does that even matter?” Dudley complained. Harry realized she missed part of the conversation about the inadequacy of the number of Dudley’s presents. Vernon huffed a booming chuckle as he unfolded the paper and took a sip of his coffee.

“Good lad, he’s just trying to get his money’s worth. Don’t forget about the zoo trip, and I’m sure we could get you another gift while we’re out.” Vernon simpered as he patted the golden boy on his back. Harry rolled her eyes, glad, for the first time ever probably, that she would be at Miss Figg’s. She couldn’t wait to clean the woman’s house and arrange her kitty photo albums, she even smiled in sadistic glee as she imagined the confused shouts of the old woman when Harry commandeered her kitchen for her experiments in vegetarian cuisine, after throwing out that awful, and seemingly omnipresent, stewed cabbage first, of course.

The phone rang and Petunia answered haughtily. “Hello?" She began. "Oh, hello Miss Figg… What do you mean? Surely you can still… I see, I see, you’re sure we can’t just drop the boy off? He’s been less trouble lately… I understand, goodbye then.” Petunia hung up the Phone and sighed. “Well, the old spinster’s gone and broken her hip, tripping over her cat or some such rot. I always said she shouldn’t keep so many filthy animals, it’s unhealthy, well now its cost us a sitter.”

“Is there really no one else to take him?” Vernon asked. Dudley seemed to be gearing up for a tantrum.

“No, they’re all on vacation or still busy. There’s that old wog, but I don’t trust her, I think she’s filling his head with nonsense, remember when he was trying to get us to let him cook vegetarian after that night he spent dinner there?” Petunia replied. Vernon scoffed in remembrance. Harry felt her eye twitch at being talked about like she wasn’t there.

“You could always leave me here. Better yet, you could drop me off alone in the park.” Harry suggested, hopefully. She was a little miffed she wouldn’t be able to try her vegetarian cooking out, but she could always walk to the library and study, or hide in some bushes to practice her voice and walk.

“No you’d probably burn the house down, you’ll have to come with us to the zoo.” Vernon grunted through gritted teeth, as if it pained him. Dudley immediately stood and wailed his protest.

“No! I don’t want him there, the poof’ll ruin everything!” Dudley threw a huge tantrum, his standard tactic for getting what he wanted, and though Vernon and Petunia cooed to him and placated him with offers of extra gifts, for the first time in as long as Harry could remember, Dudley did not get his way.

So, when the time came, Harry was wedged in-between Dudley and his right-hand toady Piers Polkiss on the way to the zoo, while the boys snickered and smacked her with their Smeltings sticks.

The zoo was actually fairly interesting. After Harry “got lost,” she was able to enjoy the animal exhibits in relative peace. She learned a great deal about the animals from the zoo-keepers. She even bought herself an ice-cream with her own money.

On her way to the reptile house, Harry noticed a girl with an enormous bush of beautiful brown hair. _If only I had a brush, I’d tie her to a chair and brush that beautiful hair until it shown like polished bronze._ Harry shook the intrusive thought from her head as she walked closer. The girl seemed to be talking to a zoo-keeper about something.

“No, no, no! you’ve got it all wrong, careful study has shown Chameleons change color based on their mood and not as a form of camouflage, I read it in a scientific journal article called _Chameleons and Mood Rings: the Unforeseen Advantages of Deleterious Mutations,_ Dr. Reichenbach explicitly said ‘the adaptive advantages of pseudo-random color shading in the green spectrum doubled as a kind of stochastic camouflage, but at the base level, the color changing probably serves as a sexual or emotional signaling mechanism, given that different types of plants did not elicit any kind of correlation in the color changes that were noted…’” The girl paused to take a deep breath, but was cut off before she could continue.

“Woah, woah, woah. I’m sorry, I’m studying zoology in Uni, kid, we don’t touch on that kind of stuff, mostly just how to take care of the animals, I just read the cue cards when asked questions.” The zoo-keeper stated. The girl huffed at the pointlessness of her tirade and turned to stalk past her bemused parents, only to run directly into a gaping Harry.

Harry planted her feet and grabbed the girl at the elbow to keep them both from falling. The brown-haired girl flushed and stuttered. “S-s-sorry…” Harry smiled and let go of her arms.

“No problem, I’m Harry. That was wicked how you actually knew more than the zoo-keeper. Do you like animals? What’s your name?” Harry babbled. The girl looked frightened like she had never had a conversation with another child her age before.

“Her-Hermione…” the girl replied looking to her parents, as if they held the answer to her strange and confusing predicament.

“Hermione, that’s a weird name, but it’s pretty, I like it! Well it was nice to meet you, I was just heading to the reptile house, so I’ll see you.” Harry stated as she glided away, smirking at the flustered reaction Hermione had. She was sure she’d never see the brown-haired girl again, which was part of what made it so fun to mess with her.

The reptile house was hot and relatively dark, though Harry still enjoyed it. Her favorites were the snakes. Though they didn’t do much, their scales were colorful and shiny like tiny armor plates made of jewels.

The most magnificent of all the captive serpents was a massive Brazilian Boa Constrictor that was silently and stoically ignoring harassment from Dudley and Piers. Harry smiled inwardly as the two boys eventually grew bored and moved on to more active denizens of the reptile house.

“Sorry about them, they get like that sometimes. There’s really nothing to be done but ignore them, trust me.” Harry whispered to the snake conspiratorially. The constrictor raised its head and seemed to look at Harry. She was surprised, not expecting the animal could even hear her through the glass, much less pay heed to her.

“You must not like it in there, trapped. I know that feeling.” Harry mentioned, wanting the conversation with the snake to be real. It seemed to nod at her words.

“You’re Brazilian, right? Was it nice there before they brought you here?” The snake turned its head down toward the plaque giving its relevant details. There in capital letters were embossed the words “bred in captivity.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I was too young to remember anything when I was taken in by the Dursleys, so I kind of understand. I wish I could—” Harry was cut off as her piggy cousin came and shoved her to the ground.

“Dad, come quick, you’ll never believe what this snake is doing!” The lump shouted, pressing his face against the glass.

Harry was rather irritated with her cousin at that moment, enough for some rather vindictive thoughts to flood her mind for a second until she settled on wishing the lout would learn what it felt like to be on display for useless idiots, trapped in a cage, never left alone.

Like a tense muscle relaxing, Harry felt a rush of static over her skin and suddenly Dudley was behind the glass, wet and crying in fear. The Boa Constrictor, on the other hand was free and hissing in delight. The crowds screamed in panic as they rushed to escape the reptile house, save for the Dursleys who were pounding on the glass in a futile attempt to free their trapped son.

“ _Thankssss amigo! Now I’m off to Brazil.”_ The snake stated, hissing to itself as it slithered away. Harry smiled and wished for the creature to make it, feeling the strange rush of static once more, leaving Harry feeling exhausted.

What she would never know is that the snake by one miracle of chance after another would evade capture, find food and reach transport, eventually making its way, after an unbelievable adventure, to the Brazilian rainforests.

The Dursleys eventually convinced zoo security that they weren’t wildlife protesters and eventually, as the sun was setting, piled into Vernon’s car and made their way home.

“Listen here boy; I know you were the cause of that fiasco today. Don’t expect to be getting any free time to do whatever it is you do while you’re out, that’s right out. You’ll be in the cupboard for the summer, except to do your chores,” Vernon blustered, when they had reached home, shoving Harry into her cupboard. “And no supper for a week!” the obese man shouted, almost as an afterthought, as he slammed and locked the cupboard shut.

Harry’s last thought before she fell into unconsciousness was, _well, this is less than ideal._

**Author's Note:**

> This is sparse on tags and warnings, this is because I don't want to spoil some of the things I have planned. Furthermore, you may have read this where I posted it on Fanfiction.net and wonder "Hey aren't there seven chapters already done?" There are two reasons I'm staggering the uploads to AO3, one is that I am rewriting chapter 2 because I no longer intend to have the same version of Dumbledore I had planned when I first started writing this, second is to make this more visible to new readers on AO3. After I finish the chapter 2 rewrite, chapter posts will go weekly until I'm caught up, then I will post new chapters as I finish them


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